Six Percent Of People Swerve Out Of Their Lane To Run Over Animals

Mark Rober, an engineer at NASA, seems
to have a little too much time on his hands. For a fun
experiment, Rober decided to camp out on the side of a road and
analyze how many cars went out of their way to hit rubber animals
he
placed on the side of the road.

Though it sounds silly, his results are interesting: He found
that about 6 percent of drivers (60 out of his sample of 1,000
cars — mostly those in SUVs and trucks) would swerve out of their
lane to hit a spider, turtle or snake on the side of the road. On
the flip side of the animal empathy coin, almost 6 percent also
pulled over to try to help the rubber animals (specifically the
snake and turtle).